A Bold Campaign Pushes Women To Push For Fair Pay

MIAMI, FL - MARCH 08: Clarissa Horsfall holds a sign reading, 'Equal Pay,' as she joins with others during 'A Day Without A Woman' demonstration on March 8, 2017 in Miami, United States. The demonstrators were calling for woman to have equity, justice and human rights for women and all gender-oppressed people. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

On this, 2017's Equal Pay Day, we recognize that women make on the average 80 percent or so of what their male colleagues enjoy. You can, of course, hear all of the standard explanations for the phenomenon:

Women work fewer hours.

They don't take jobs that are as demanding.

Taking time off for kids has a clear impact on career paths.

If you recognize that among people paid at or even below the prevailing federal minimum wage rate (which, let's remember, is $7.25 an hour, so not even considering all minimum wage workers according to various state standards), women make up almost 63 percent of the workers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there are even those who will argue that a low minimum wage is actually good because people supposedly move up into higher-paying jobs. (That is the claim. The data shows the opposite, that people in minimum wage jobs tend to stay in them.)

The explanations are really rationalizations. Highly educated women in demanding jobs often face even higher pay discrimination than their male colleagues. Arguing that women work fewer hours or at less demanding jobs doesn't explain the apples-to-apples differences. And trotting out children as the excuse is only a rationalization of the invisible subsidy that men get when considering the perpetuation of the species. Women are expected to take one for the team, when men generally don't.

There are attempts to push new laws to enforce standards of equality or to shame companies into better performance. Given that lack of results, it seems fair to say that neither approach has had much wide impact. With no white knight on the horizon willing to admit culpability and to rectify the situation, women need other approaches.

One is to negotiate harder and push for equal pay. To that end comes the Cindy Gallop bot, a not-safe-for-work (or NSFW, at least by expletive standards) software program that will accept Facebook Messenger messages at the address @AskCindyGallop. Here's Gallop, an advertising consultant and former agency bigwig, explaining in her own style (with the occasional bleeped phrase) how this works by getting negotiation advice from her own digital doppelganger.

The point is to get women to acknowledge to themselves that they are underpaid, recognize their own value, and ask for what they're worth. That means up and down the line. It's no good if those at the top get adjustments while so many women languish and endure a large part of the unnecessary income inequality we have in the world.

Erik Sherman writes about business, technology, economics, and public policy. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.